


FRAUDS 



UPON - 



LIFE INSURANCE COMPANIES: 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFOBE 

The Life Underwriters' Association 

OF THE 

STATE OF OHIO, 

At Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday, June 19, 1877, 



HG 

37 



C. C. BOMBAUGH, M. D. 



PUBLICATION OFFICE 
OF THE 

BALTIMORE UNDERWRITER. 

1877. 




Class Jd(kll! 
Book " B7 



FRAUDS 



UPOK 



LIFE INSURANCE COMPANIES: 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFORE 

The Life Underwriters' Association 

OE THE 

STATE OF OHIO, 

At Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday, June 19, 1877, 

*$>/ C. C. BOMBAUGH, M. D. 




PUBLICATION OFFICE 

OF THE 

BALTIMORE UNDERWRITER. 

1877. 



ADDRESS 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 

Life Underwriters' Assotiat<on of tJie State of Ohio : 

That gospel which the faithful servitor at the altar in the temple of 
Life Insurance so patiently and ofttimes so acceptably preaches, is 
two-fold in its operation. Like the quality of Mercy, it blesseth him 
that gives and him that takes. It is at once a business and a benefi- 
cence; a function of finance and a mission of humanity. Like the 
ministry of the church, which provides for the spiritual needs of ite 
people, and the ministry of health, which cares for their physical 
wants, its aims embrace the moral as well as the material welfare of 
society. It recognizes the fact that the condition of the members of 
a community is one of interdependence ; it gives practical form and 
expression to the truth that they can only live by mutual aid. It 
presents to our consideration carefully ascertained laws and princi- 
ples, and their adaptation to meet the chances of vicissitude, to pro- 
vide against the contingency of death, and to avert prospective dis- 
aster in the home circle. As the result of prudential observance of 
the obligation imposed upon the " breadwinner " of the family, and in 
return for his voluntary sacrifices, we have the cheering picture of 
hope sustained, of enterprise invigorated, of firesides preserved, of 
pauperism reduced, of suffering alleviated, and of crime prevented. 

Nearly thirty-four centuries ago the inspired Hebrew lawgiver pro- 
claimed the divine mandate by which the people of Israel were com- 
pelled under heavy penalties to support their widows and fatherless 
children. By a carefully regulated system, those who were bereaved 
of their natural protectors, instead of being left in distress and desti- 
tution, were entitled to the gleanings of the harvests, to tithes of corn* 
oil and wine, and to remembrance at public festivals, and offerings of 
the herds and flocks. Herein was the germ of that charity which 
seeks to mitigate affliction and sorrow by neutralizing the burden, 
the peril, and the privation of poverty. 



Of the form of indemnity thus supplied under the Mosaic dispen- 
sation, we discover traces in other primitive civilizations. Almost 
contemporaneously we find evidences that the advantage of mutual 
indemnity in case of misfortune was understood, and that the dis- 
tributive principle of lightening the hardships of the few by diffusion 
among the many had been applied to the purposes of trade and com- 
merce in a crude and limited manner. We find also that the doctrines 
of chance attracted attention at a very remote period, although it 
does not seem to have occurred to the earlier mathematicians to 
utilize and give practical direction to the theory of probabilities in 
its relation to life contingencies. The Chaldee was too much ab- 
sorbed in his starry lore, the Persian too attentive to the flame he 
worshiped, to heed the light of its promise. It was but " a barren 
sceptre in their gripe," the sway of which was reserved for later 
generations. 

So, too, with the principle of voluntary association, of which we 
have intimations in the Talmud, and in the Rhodian law of marine 
average enacted more than eight hundred years B. C. Not till a 
century after the commencement of the Christian era do we find 
definite and reliable accounts of associative bodies with the reciprocal 
obligations of membership. The regulations and by-laws of friendly 
and burial societies in Rome in the time of the Emperor Adrian have 
been preserved, and as we pass down the echoing corridors of the 
centuries that follow, our attention is frequently arrested by the 
organized efforts of guilds, or confraternities, for mutual relief in 
trouble, and mutual assistance in sickness, as well as for the protec- 
tion of trade interests. Of the guilds o'f the Middle Ages, the Saxon 
associations appear to have been the best prototypes of our modern 
friendly societies in so far as relates to their mutual beneficiary pur- 
pose, but it should be remembered that while in the latter this pur- 
pose is exclusive and all-pervading, in the former it was simply 
subsidiary to the maintenance of the rights and prerogatives of a par- 
ticular class or craft. 

But these, after all, were only feeble foreshadowings of the syste- 
matic benevolence of the present day; only buds that faintly indicated 
the modern expansion and maturity of the flower ; only blossoms that 
gave inappreciable promise of development into the full fruition of 
the period in which it is our privilege to live. It was reserved for the 
age which is conquering time and space ; which is unfolding and ex- 



plaining the marvels which puzzled aud the mysteries which perplexed 
the race of man for thousands of years; which is placing under sub- 
jection the obedient forces of nature, and compelling them, hour by 
hour, to minister to our use and our comfort, and which is displaying 
in the course of ©ur daily life such miracles as seers and oracles, in 
their most fanciful imaginings, never dreamed of, — to number among 
its achievements and its triumphs that scheme which teaches men 
how to "bear one another's burdens," and which, when the arm of 
the husband and father is paralyzed, and his heart's pulsations are 
silenced, bridges the chasm of dependence by saying — but not with 
irreverence — as was once said through the prophet Jeremiah, "Leave 
thy fatherless children to me, and I will preserve them alive ; and let 
thy widows trust in me." 

Yet this scheme, admirable alike in its plan and its purpose, shares 
the common lot of institutions, human and divine. There is no such 
thing as individual or corporate immunity from external assailants, 
or from internal infirmity, " temptation without, and corruption 
within." If even the consecrated cross provokes the touch of sacri- 
lege, how can that which has less of the odor of sanctity, and more 
of the earth earthy, hope to avoid profanation ? If money changers 
denied the Temple at Jerusalem, is it any wonder that renegades and 
apostates have stained with perfidy the official ranks and the agency 
work of life insurance? If among the great ecclesiastical leaders of 
the hierarchies of Judeea and of Rome there were high-priests and 
pontiffs who were crimsoned with crime ; if among the most exalted 
and the most venerated of the clergy of the present day there are 
those that impel the question, " who shall guard the shepherds them- 
selves?" how can the institution of life insurance expect to escape 
foes of its own household ? And if there be treason within, how 
can its sincere advocates and zealous defenders expect to escape 
treachery without ? 

Both of these themes demand your earnest and serious considera-' 
tion. - The one — the mal-administration of official or delegated trust — 
will occupy more or less of the time appropriated to your reports and 
discussions ; to the other — the stratagems and conspiracies to rob the 
companies you represent — I invoke your attention for a brief season. 

Now, to the most superficial inquiry into the curious resources and 
expedients of this form of fraud, certain points will at once suggest 



themselves. Jn the first place, it is obvious that thecottiinissioii of crime 
of various grades and phases with a view to swindle the life compa- 
nies out of their accumulations, though a transgression of very recent 
origin, is one of very rapid growth, the growth keeping pace with the 
enormous acceleration which has been given to the life insurance 
interest, and lengthening correspondingly the dockets of our courts. 
In the next place, it has given additional breadth and scope to an 
ever-advancing system of medical jurisprudence, and additional im- 
pulse to the investigation of medico-legal questions. Moreover, it is 
apparent that though the means employed and the devices resorted 
to may not, as a general rule, be remarkable for novelty or origi- 
nality, yet the execution of the plot, in nine cases in ten, involves 
details so dramatic, -and incidents so romantic, as to re-affirm with 
emphasis the dictum that truth is stranger than fiction. What, for 
instance, could be more thrilling than the Alabama story of the 
family feuds which led to the outlawry, the evasion of justice, and 
■concealment of John H. Brantly^ the attachment of the beautiful 
Minerva, his wife, and the fascinating Eskridge, which culminated in 
overpowering infatuation •;' the strange incidents flowing out of their 
mutual idolatry; their gradual impoverishment and their contrivances 
to replenish their purser the insurance of Brantly's life, and eventually 
Mrs. B's consent to the murder of her husband during his enforced 
exile in Mississippi, that the guilty parties might, at the expense of 
two companies, fan to hotter flame their illicit loves-; the arrest and 
trial and conviction of Eskridge 5 the glowing and passionate letters 
of the fraetic woman with which the tedium of his prison life was 
beguiled, and his subsequent escape, recapture, and pardon on the 
eve of execution through the bribery of a negro lieutenant governor ? 
If the playwright in the construction of his piece must needs have 
villainy to serve as a foil for virtue, where can he find a better model 
than Udderzook, the hero and dare-devil of the G-oss case? When 
did playwright in the moments of his highest inspiration fabricate a 
villain so transcendent in villainy, " in shape and gesture " so " proudly 
eminent?" Before the curtain the crafty adventurer may cut a vulgar 
figure, but behind the scenes the marvelous creations of the poets fade, 
in the presence of this Mephistopheles, into dim eclipse. What more 
startling attitude could the sensation monger present than that of the 
ruined Yorkshire squire, who, in an outburst of revenge and desper- 
ation, resolved to destroy his own life in order to dupe the gamesters 
who had not only dispossessed him of his estate, but had accumulated 



winnings which he could not have redeemed in a lifetime, and to 
cover which, as they were otherwise unprovided for, the knaves had 
heavily insured his life. Kote the coolness and nonchalance with 
which he notifies the insurers of his purpose to void the policies by 
the act of self-destruction, the assurance he gives of his calmness and 
his sanity, and the evidence he furnishes of utter weariness of a wasted 
life before his final leave taking, and his deliberate plunge into the 
Thames, What more surprising transmutation could the novelist in- 
vent in the closing chapters of his story than that which was given to 
the plot of an officer in the British army by the counterplot of the family 
physician ? After the latter had detected the colonel in his efforts to 
destroy his wife by a process of slow poisoning, and had confronted 
him with the evidence, he significantly informed him that the com- 
pany in which the lady was insured had failed; as an offset, however, 
she had succeeded, by the death of a relative, to an annuity of £300 a 
year. There was, therefore, a sudden and complete reversal of motive, 
and thenceforth, the colonel was as anxious to keep his wife alive 
as he had before been to compass her death, while she, poor thing, 
with the coostancy and credulity of women, rejoiced in her inmost- 
soul at the increased tenderness of her husband. 

Of course, in your representative capacity you are less concerned 
with the romantic and sentimental features of these cases than with 
their criminal aspects, and with their detection and repression. The 
institutions of which you are the chief pillars have been mainly in- 
strumental in bringing to justice offenders of this class, and they are 
entitled to the commendation of the courts for their vigorous partici- 
pation in the work of checkmating and punishing an increasing form 
of roguery. Every good agent identifies himself with his company, 
and regards its true interest as something with which he has a direct 
and immediate affiliation. Not only in your position as good agents, 
but as good citizens likewise, it becomes your duty to subserve the 
ends of justice by aiding to the extent of your ability in the exposure 
of raids upon the funds held in trust for your policyholders. 

In order that such assistance may be effective, you should be 
familiar with the strategic lines most likely to be pursued, and be able 
to interpret their bearings. The ways of the dark-lantern guerillas 
are always hidden, and often mysterious, but luckily, they are not 
always past finding out. Their tricks are pretty certain to assume 
shapes or disguises, which, however veiled in shadow or obscurity, 



are readily resolvable, or analyzable by the quick-witted detective. 
Their manoeuvres are apt to run in grooves so routine, and, for the 
most part, so common-place in their character, that well-trained per- 
ception will unravel a thread here, or ferret out a loosened screw 
there, which is sure to open the gateway of discovery. Sometimes a 
streak of daylight is admitted through a crevice in an unprovided for 
emergency ; sometimes the robber is encouraged and emboldened by 
success in one venture to repetition, and with it, only to find himself, 
sooner or later, in the pit which himself has digged ; sometimes the 
weariness of waiting through the long interval of the law's delay leads 
to impatient utterance, and indiscreet action, and, in some unguarded 
moment, to involuntary revelation. But, as you well know, it too 
often happens that the lips of the conspirators are hermetically 
sealed, and that self-betrayal is no part of their programme. It too 
often happens that the companies consciously and compulsorily sub- 
mit to the plundering process because of unbelieving and unimpres- 
sionable juries. To their own vision the evidences of fraudulent 
intent may be overwhelming in their conclusiveness; to the average 
American juror, with his proverbial want of fairness and discernment, 
there is nothing manifest but the threadbare and lying assertion that 
" corporations have no souls." Not but that there are occasions when 
the missing link may be as fatal to satisfactory acceptance as it is, in 
the view of many thoughtful men, to the Darwinian theory of evolu- 
tion, and when the Scotch verdict of " not proven" might be received 
with some degree of equanimity. But you and I have witnessed 
cases in which the chain of circumstance was complete and uninter- 
rupted — not one missing link — when, with characteristic perversity 
the demands of common sense, of unclouded judgment, of clear con- 
viction, and of obvious justice, were all surrendered to unreasoning 
prejudice. Trial by jury in the last eight hundred years has made the 
same sort of progress that was made by one of the exploring parties 
of Captain Parry, the Arctic navigator. His men traveled toward the 
North Pole at the rate of ten miles a clay, while the ice on which they 
were moving was drifting toward the equator at the rate of twelve miles 
a day. How many of these modern jurymen will you find who hesi- 
tate to declare their sympathy for the policyholder as against the com- 
pany, the individual versus the corporation, and to maintain their 
readiness, when they choose to dance, to make the company pay the 
piper, ignoring the fact that the policyholder is an integral part of the 
company, and that the company is only an association of policyholders. 



Fortunately for the best and broadest interests of humanity, we 
can look beyond the jury-box for even-handed counterpoising of the 

scales. 

Damocles' sword hangs overhead ; 
Justice may sleep, but she is not dead. 

Here, as elsewhere, in the economy of the social fabric, there are 
checks and balances and compensations. There are courts of appeal, 
and of last resort, and to them the companies may confidently look 
for vindication and retribution. Now and then some accomplished 
actor like Mrs. Victor may dupe your kindhearted physicians with 
her Ophelia-like plaintiveness, and soften a tenderhearted governor 
like General Hayes with the musical refrain, " there is rest for the 
weary," and cheat the gallows by first singing herself into the safe 
shelter of an insane asylum, and then into a commutation of the death 
sentence to imprisonment for life. But these murderous fiends can- 
not always play so successfully upon the gullibility and the compas- 
sion of the sympathetic. Sometimes appeals for further concession, or 
for any concession, are resisted with the Roman firmness which your 
present Chief Magistrate has shown, within a few days, in this notori- 
ous case. Remembering, therefore, that there is such a thing as an im- 
partial tribunal, you have sufficient encouragement to put forth your 
best efforts toward the capture and conviction of this class of criminals. 

Frauds against life insurance companies may be grouped under 
four general heads — feigned death, mysterious disappearance, homi- 
cide, and suicide. This classification, as you will observe, compre- 
hends those actively aggressive forms of fraud which contemplate 
speedy realization of the atrocious end in view, and which, therefore, 
are broadly contradistinguished from less tangible sorts of imposture, 
such, for instance, as material concealment or misrepresentation in 
the answers recorded in the application. It is in the nature of these 
latter deceptions that for possible results they can only look remotely 
to the chances of the future, and the natural course of events, while 
their flagrancy is generally mitigated by individual unselfishness. 
But while in the armamentaria of fraud there are no weapons which 
more urgently call for your watchful care, our time, this evening, 
limits us to the consideration of the assaults of deeper desperation 
and more remorseless cupidity. * 

In the first of the classes which I have just named may be included 
pretended death, such, for example, as the trance, or cataleptic state, 



10 

which may be artificially induced by certain narcotics— notably the 
cannabis indica; next, insidious methods of false certification, either 
through bribery or forgery ; again, false personation of the applicant, 
and deception of the medical examiner; and finally, substitution of 
a dead body. 

Curiously enough, not only the most striking illustration, but, so 
far as we know, the only case of successfully simulated death is that 
of the first fraud in the history of life insurance. According to Mr. 
Francis, who tells the story in his very entertaining " Annals, Anec- 
dotes and Legends of Life Assurance," it occurred in the year 1780, 
' Two persons," says Francis, " resided in the then obscure suburbs of 
St. Giles, one of whom was a woman about twenty, the other a man 
whose age would have allowed him to be the woman's father, and who 
was generally understood to bear that relation. Their position hoyered 
on the debatable ground between poverty and competence, or might 
be characterized by the modern term, shabby-genteeh They inter- 
fered with no one, and they encouraged no one to interfere with, 
them. No specific personal description is recorded of them beyond 
the fact that the man was tall and middle-aged, bearing a semi-military 
aspect, and the woman, though young and attractive in person, was 
apparently haughty and frigid in her manner. On a sudden, at night- 
time, the latter was taken very ill; the man sought the wife of his 
nearest neighbor for assistance, informing her that his daughter had 
been seized with a sudden and great pain at the heart. They returned 
together, and found her in the utmost apparent agony, shrinking from 
the approach of all, and dreading the slightest touch. The leech was 
sent for, but before he could arrive she seemed insensible, and he only 
entered the room in time to see her die. The father appeared in great 
distress, the doctor felt her pulse, placed his hand on her heart, shook 
his head as he intimated all was oyer, and went his way." Mr. 
Francis then relates that after "£, 3 burial formalities the bereaved 
father claimed some money insured on his daughter's life and left the 
locality. In continuation of the story, which is exceedingly interest- 
ing, we are told that the same couple, under different relationships 
played a similar game twice afterward with great success; first in 
Queen Square, London, where they lived in very dashing and prodi- 
gal style, and where their winnings at cards were almost enough to 
meet current expenses; and again in Liverpool, where, in the guise of 
a highly respected merchant, the poor gentleman of the suburbs and 
the gambling captain of Queen Square was not only deep in the mys- 



11 

Series 'of'coTu and-rottoii, but became renowned for •charita'ble enter- 
prises and constant attendance at 'church. 

But without -stopping to inquire into the nature of that statuesque 
pose and that stony appearance which is termed ccstasis, and in which 
not only the voluntary movements are arrested and external sensa- 
tions are suspended, but, more strangely still, even the vital action is 
retarded, we may reasonably observe that no intelligent physician at 
the present day could be deceived by this torponor apparent suppres- 
sion of the organic functions, and that the onSy way to obtain the 
medical certificate or proof of death required by the companies in the 
adjustment of claims must be through collusion and bribery. 

This has been notably the case in the few instances of simulated or 
pretended death in this country. In the Rainforth swindle, concocted 
in Chicago by Richard Rainforth, Dr. C. B. Kendall, and T. W. 
Fuller, it was pre-arranged that the principal actor should assume 
death following typhoid fever, and that previous to burial, another 
body should fee smuggled into the coffin. Dr. Kendall wen* through 
the solemn farce of saying "Poor Dick is dead \ n But as the pro- 
nunciamento of -one of the conspirators would hardly satisfy three 
companies interested to the amount of $15,600, an outside physician, 
as appearances went, was called in to make affirmation more em- 
phatic. Their artifice, however, was so transparent and the game so 
feebly and clumsily managed that little surprise was occasioned by 
Fuller's confession on the witness stand, and the circumstance would 
soon have been forgotten had not attention been attracted to a sensa- 
tional communication from Fuller to the Chicago Tvihum, in the 
course of which lie said:— 

" The origin of this business is not here. There are parties con- 
nected with it who stand high in society, and who have great influ- 
ence. It is an organ ked comp? ^ with headquarters in New York. 
It has ramifications throughout f m principal States, and the persons 
engaged are in such positions that, if attempted, the frauds will sel- 
dom be discovered, because the doctor and the man who is reported 
to die have no knowledge outside of the case in which they are 
-engaged." 

Whatever the object of this singular statement, I am not aware that 
it was ever taken for more than it was worth. 

With regard to forged proofs of death, without auxiliaries in reserve, 
I think you will find that though at first glance such fabrication would 
seem to open an inviting field for knavery, it is comparatively rare, be- 



cause comparatively easy of detection Take, by way of illustration, a 
recent case of false certification in France. A youug teacher named 
Desbouis, in Nevers, was the beneficiary f>f policies o.i the life of his 
mother, a widow living in Tonnay, in the company named Le Monde, to 
the amount of 50,009 fraDes. Toward the end of January, M. Desbouis 
notified the agent of Le Monde in Nevers that his mother was dead. 
The agent forthwith communicated the information to the company, 
and shortly afterward the officers received a letter frrm the family 
announcing the fact; also, the Mayor's official certificate of the death 
of the widow Desbouis; and the usual certificates of the physician 
and the undertaker. As these certificates were upon ordinary paper, 
the company thought they had a suspicious look, and called upon M. 
Desbouis to furnish certificates upon stamped paper, This he .did a 
few days afterward. A comparison between the new certificates and 
those previously furnished strengthened the suspicions of the com- 
pany, Notwithstanding a favorable repoit from the agent in Nevers, 
they sent one of their inspectors to Charente. in "\Yestern France, to 
institute an investigation, the result of which was the discovery that 
the widow Desbouis was in good health, and blissfully ignorant of 
her son's fraudulent manoeuvres. The next time the youug man 
called at the home office, in Paris, he w r as arrested. 

This, you will probably say in Elizabethan phrase, which has been 
naturalized in modern slang, was " too thin." Yet counterfeits con- 
siderably thinner than this have succeeded. 

A much more dangerous and far more frequent form of fraud is 
false personation of an applicant. Here, both agent and examiner 
may be innocent victims of deception; on the other hand, both may 
be in rascally collusion with other parties to defraud the agent's com- 
pany: or, again, the agent may conspire with others to deceive the 
examiner. Mr. Francis, in his '"Annals," gives an account of the 
earliest known instance of such deception. Application was made 
in the year 1780 to a London office to insure the life of a lady for 
£2,000. Her health was sound, constitution excellent, references 
satisfactory, and the policy was issued. Within six months a claim 
was made for the money. In the proofs of loss, which were found to 
be regular, the disease was certified to be pulmonary consumption. 
Thereupon, directors looked grave and questioned the secretary, and 
the secretary looked rueful and questioned the doctor. There was 
no accounting for such a termination of the risk ; it seemed en regie; 



13 

no fraud could be alleged, and the policy was paid. Information sub- 
sequently given to the office, however, led to inquiry, and it was 
ascertained that one sister being an incurable invalid, the other per- 
sonated her at the assurance office, deceived the medical examiner, 
sent in the certificate of her sisters death, and obtained the money. 
Thereafter she disappeared, and no thought of restitution was enter- 
tained. This vicarious portraiture, this impersonation mutate nom 
has often been repeated since, and too often with similar results, the 
companies concerned being ^compelled to abide by their losses. 

Not less perilous to the treasuries of the companies is the ha 
of treason in the camp. When agent and examiner both prove faith- 
less to their allegiance and sell themselves for a price, ripening in the 
sunshine of favor and confidence to abuse the one and betray the 
other, it leaves a legacy of painful memories to those who, like your- 
selves, my friends, find their highest enjoyment in that loyalty which 
remains, from first to last, *' unmoved, unshaken, unseduced." You 
are probably aware that most of the cases of conviction of this class 
are transatlantic. This, unfortunately, does not prove the infre- 
quency of such treachery at home; it only shows that judicial pursuit 
and penalty abroad are more unrelenting and more decisive, 

There are two features which largely predominate in these cases. 
One is that when conspiracy is unmasked, disclosure is generally due 
to some neighboring Paul Pry, or to some dissatisfied member of a 
ring which may be clever enough to hoodwink a detective, but is not 
smart enough to master the tranquiliziug equities of what the politi- 
cians call "addition, division, and silence." The other is that 
through settlement, compounding, social or partisan influence, con- 
cealment, emigration, failure to prosecute, or relaxed administration 
of law, the chief actors in such conspiracies in this country nearly 
always manage to escape the reach of justice. Hence, their trickery 
seldom becomes a matter of court record, and exposure and comment 
on the part of the journalist may become actionable. Unless pre- 
pared to face the music of vindictiveness, he dare not hint at actual 
fraud, much less inferential or cowtructks fraud. 

As to the substitution of a body, or of rubbish, in a coffin at time of 
burial, you will find plenty of illustrative eases. There was Franz 
Thomatschek, in Berlin, in 1848, and Vital Douat, the Bordeaux wine 
merchant, in 1866, both heavily insured, and botli of whom, impelled 
by irresistible curiosity, and disguised beyond recognition, attended 



14 

their own funerals- But when the police were pat npoa the scent, 
and disinterment took place, Thomatschek's coffin only revealed con- 
tents of stone and straw, and DouaV's a block of lead. BoSh were 
captured and sentenced to penal servitude. These eases will naturally 
remind you of a similar circumstance in your own midst. Ton all 
remember the little plot contrived in 2SG& by a gang at Eaton, ia 
Preble county, composed of Bachelor., an apothecary and local insur- 
ance agent; Abbot, a glass leader and mayor of Eaton - T Dr, Richard- 
son, a Jeremy Diddler who, on & previous occasion, bad successfully 
swindled a life company out of $4,900, aad his brother Frank, whs 
lived near Lebanon. These confederated scamps invented a fictitious 
personage whom they named W. T. McITadden. Thi3 dummy, per- 
sonated by the pious Abbot, was insured for a large amount, and 
when the plan was fully matured, died on Christmas-eve of malignant 
cholera, conveniently introduced at that unusual season because of 
the rapidly fatal collapse incident to the Asiatic malady. This pan 
of the tragic farce was enacted in Frank Richardson "s house in 
Lebanon. On the pretext of avoiding infection, the body was hastily 
cofaned next morning, placed in a wagon and driven to Eason r and 
at midnight was ceremoniously buried in the quiet churchyard ad- 
joining the village. You recall the rest of the story— how suspicion 
was awakened, now the coroner proceeded in the discharge of his 
functions, how the coSIn was exhumed from its resting-place, and 
how, instead of the resurrection of a body there was only displayed 
to view two or three bushels of broom-corn seed. After all, it was 
better thus for the schemers, for if a body had been found, they might 
have been indicted for murder. Nevertheless, a genuine body may 
sometimes prove advantageous •, in the first act of the Goss case, for 
example, the chaired remains of some tramp, or dissecting room sub- 
ject, in spite of its Ueth and other discrepancies, brought the hand- 
some woman, who played the widow with such consummate art, a 
verdict worth $25,000 and accrued interest. If the comedy had not 
ended in a tragedy, as it did, the companies concerned would have 
been compelled to submit to judicial robbery. In the case of Mrs. 
Mary Davis, of Knightstown, Indiana, a New York company paid 
£3,000 without suspicion of the game of proxy. A female body, 
much decayed, and dressed in Mrs. Davis' clothes, was found in a 
field adjoining the town of Richmond, and as Mrs. Davis had disap- 
peared, the remains were conceded to be hers, and it was presumed 
she had been foully dealt with. A skeptical Connecticut company 



15 

took a different view of tbe ease, and without much trouble traced 
Mrs. Davis to the town of Greensburg, in Pennsylvania. 

Under the comprehensive term, " mysterious disappearance," may 
be classed a majority of the frauds upon the companies. Adventurers 
who hesitate at the commission of capital crimes are quite willing to 
leave behind them, through the dramatic effect of dissolving views, 
reasonable conclusions or presumptions of their death. There is a 
remarkable monotony in the recurrence of these disappearances, the 
favorite method in most cases, being by immersion and pretended 
drowning in some convenient stream of water. It is a trick which is 
usually planned with a good deal of art, and executed with a good 
deal of skill; yet there is almost always an ear-mark or a trail which, 
however insignificant to an untutored eye, is sure to lead to eventual 
capture. There was the Georgia case of Captain Martin L. Bryan, 
who, about ten years ago, while surveying some marshes on the Sa- 
vannah, tumbled from a batteau into the river. His relatives, while de- 
ploring his fate, commended the prudence which had led him shortly 
before to insure his life for $80,000. A vast amount of documentary 
evidence was furnished by his son, who was a law student, to prove 
both the drowning and the spotless reputation of the departed. But 
after ten months of voluntary exile in Florida the gallant captain con- 
cluded that discretion was better than valor, and he returned home 
There was the Illinois ignis fatuus, Allen alias Sargent, who made his 
appearance in Beloit, Wis., in company with an accomplice in the 
person of a Pecatonica widow, Mrs. Foilett, and went through the 
form of marriage by a clergyman. On their return, the newly wedded 
husband sought a safety-valve for his overcharged emotions by skat- 
ing on the Pecatonica river, and, according to report, he plunged 
through an air-hole in the ice, and was drowned. Payment by the 
company in which he was insured being refused, the case came to 
trial, and the plaintiff and her witnesses turned the air blue with 
perjury. All of them identified the mythical Allen, — the original 
being concealed in the crowd of spectators, — by a photograph pro- 
duced in court, but their joy was turned into mourniug when the 
defense introduced an innocent Batavia tailor, and showed that he 
was the original of the stolen picture. There was the Indiana incar- 
nation of diabolism, "General" Boswell, alias Howe, who under the 
guise of religion, and with a great affectation of freemasonry, " trans- 
acted villanies that common sinners durst not meddle with." While 



16 

going through the catalogue of crime he tried the drowning game. 
On pretense of business be went with his wife to St. Louis, giving out 
tbat be w T ould go thence by steamboat to some point on tbe Missouri 
river. At midnight, feeling very sick, he left his stateroom to get fresh 
air, and fell overboard soon after tbe boat bad rounded into the mouth 
of the Missouri. Mrs. Boswell was bringing him water, and saw him 
fall. She gave the alarm, the steamer was stopped, and a yawl low- 
ered, but diligent search failed to recover the cold corpus. This was 
her story,— without the embellishments, — and as she was a model 
Christian sister in the churcb, everybody believed her but an obstinate 
insurance company, and strange to say, that incredulous company, 
three years afterward, proved that " General" Boswell had changed his 
clothes on board the steamer at St. Louis, and had gone ashore unob- 
served before the boat started; it proved that he was living at Gales- 
burg under the style and title of Judge Howe, and its only recompense 
to the guilty couple for their attempted fraud was prolonged separation, 
ending in arrest, exposure, disgrace, and imprisonment. There was 
that gay youth, Charles McCormiek, of Ogdensburg, N. Y., who, I am 
sorry to say, was a general agent — a black sheep in the flock. He ought 
to have known better than to repeat so bald an artifice as that of 
asphyxia by immersion. But he was maladroit enough to try his 
luck, and while crossing the St. Lawrence from Massena to Corn- 
wall, in Canada, he was drowned — at least, so his wife believed; — 
certainly, in this case, the wife, instead of being accessory, was an 
innocent victim of infidelity. But the company in which he was in- 
sured, when called upon to pay, declined, persistently believing that 
he was not — as the humorists would say — drowned to any great ex- 
tent. It became necessary, in support of this conviction to send a 
special in search of the missing Charles. It was learned that soon 
after his disappearance a grass widow named Martha, in a neighbor- 
ing town, likewise disappeared, and that both had concluded to " go 
West." How they were traced and pursued in their wanderings 
from one town to another by avenging footsteps is a curious story. 
Finally, they separated, and Martba undertook to make an honest 
living by keeping a cigar shop in Cbicago. To this fair vender of the 
Indian weed, the special regularly repaired for his supplies, and so 
effective were his blandishments that Martha was induced to turn 
State's evidence. As the result, Cbarles w T as found under an assumed 
name in Janesville, Wis., and compelled to put himself in writing, 
thus : — 



17 

" I learn that a claim has been made under my policy in your com- 
pany, the claimant representing that I am dead, and I hereby beg to 
inform you that the claim is not yet good as I am living and in fair 
health " 

But even a faint outline of these cases would occupy our entire 
time, so numerous are they. Some of you, no doubt, will recall the 
Shepherd case, in the Potomac, near Alexandria; the Brownfield 
swindler Clement, who after nightfall, forced his horse and wagon 
over a cliff into the Saco river, and then escaped under cover of 
darkness ; the Northwood desperado, Franklin Evans, who tried the 
drowning trick at Hampton beach, N". H., before the murders for 
which he was hung; the equally stupid attempt of the Boston broker, 
Alvah Hurter, at Scarborough; the Susquehanna case of a young 
■man bearing the very singular name of John Smith; the Texas case 
of Valentine Spruell, reported to have been knocked off a schooner 
in San Luis pass; or the case of Joseph Leppen, who, when a man 
whom he resembled was really drowned in the Ohio, near Wheeling, 
suddenly conceived the idea of palming off the body of the stranger 
as his own. Some of these cases show the romauce of reality in the 
strongest light of which it is capable, but while you admire the inge- 
nuity they exhibit, you execrate its terrible misdirection. 

In revolving our many-sided picture, we next come to the tragic 
side, the portion whereon the darker shadows fall. Here, to the 
eagerness of the speculator, and the calculation of the gamester, is 
added the fiendishness of deliberately planned and relentlessly pur- 
sued homicide, and in view of the fact that the victim is generally 
selected from that relationship or that friendship which will sustain 
an insurable interest, we may well exclaim — 

" Murder, most foul, as in the best it is ; 
But this, most foul, strange, and unnatural." 

If you will scan the biography of the homicides who have left their 
names on the scroll of this infamy, you will find that many of them 
were patterns of gentlemanly grace and fastidious polish. But under 
the surface show of refinement and complaisance was the serpent's 
fang. The velvet glove concealed a bloody hand ; gilding and sugar- 
coating masked the poison that had been smuggled into the salutary 
drug prescribed as a restorative. Probably no one of this class ever 
equalled Thomas Griffith Wainwright, the literary coxcomb, who, 
under the nom de plume of Janus Weathercock, wrote such slashing 



18 

reviews and spicy criticisms in the English magazines on art and 
artists, the drama, the opera, and the ballet. Of fine person and 
fascinating manners, great fluency and ready wit, he was not only an 
acknowledged leader of fashion, but such a favorite in aristocratic 
circles that even the gentle and amiable Charles Lamb could not help 
writing of hirn, " kind, light-hearted Janus Weathercock." Nor did 
he ever sparkle with such unwonted gayety, or so outshine his ac- 
customed elegance as while the poison he was secretly administering 
was speeding on its deadly errand. It is nearly half a C3ntury since 
Helen. Abercrornbie's young life was sacrificed by this brother-in-law 
in hope of gaining £18,000, but many another half century will roll 
around before the circumstance will be forgotten in England. Who- 
ever follows his career can easily understand why Mr. Francis ob- 
serves of him, " it was death to starjd in his path; it was death to 
be his friend ; it was death to occupy the very house with him. Well 
might his associates join in that portion of the litany which prays to 
be delivered from battle and murder and sudden death, for sudden 
death was ever by his side." 

Yet in point of resolute daring and in frequency of repetition, 
Wain wright's clandestine assassinations were tame in comparison with 
those of William Palmer, the sporting surgeon of Rugely, who, in 
giving himself up to two absorbing fancies, horse-racing and chemical 
experiments in his laboratory, involved himself in enormous debts of 
honor, and at the same time found a way to cancel them. First, his 
mother-in-law was poisoned; then his four children in succession at 
intervals of a year or two ; then his wife, who was insured for 
£15,000; then his brother Walter; and finally his creditor and sport- 
ing friend, Cook, whose suspicious death led to post mortem investi- 
gation, and the discovery of strychnia as the agent whereby the hard- 
pressed debtor had been enabled to repay usurious money-lenders. 
When the executioner put a stop to his criminal career he was only 
thirty -one years of age. 

These English miscreants have had their counterparts on the 
continent. Such cases as those of Count Pommerais in Fiance, and 
Bernard Hartung in Germany, show that the advantages of educa- 
tion, of cultivated society, and of refining influences, instead of being 
armor-proof against temptation to crime, are sometimes, in periods of 
financial embarrassment, immediate incentives to felony as the only 
available promise of rehabilitation. But when we come back to our 



19 

1 

own country we find in the cases which are known — some there are 

that never will be known — none of the glamour of classic elegance 
and cultured taste and high breeding. With very few exceptions, 
they are the vulgarest of vulgar villains. Some of them are so 
irredeemably brutal and malignant that no ray of relieving light is 
able to penetrate them. And on the highest pinnacle of crime you 
may safely place that sum of all atrocities, that fore-front of all enor- 
mities, tlie murder of the child Angie Stewart. It was the tragedy 
which, nearly ten years ago, opened in your good city of Dayton, and 
closed in the village of Canaan, N. Y. You all remember how that 
inhuman pair, Joseph and Josephine Brown, alias Barney, borrowjed 
from Mrs. Mary Stewart, of Dayton, her little daughter Angie on 
pretense of companionship in travel; how they proceeded to Cleve- 
land, and obtained an accident policy on the child for $5,000 ; how, 
after obliterating their tracks as well as they could, they finally turned 
up in Canaan and rented a house; how, in due time, the stony-hearted 
wretches strangled the poor little girl, thrust the body into a closet, 
and set fire to the house to conceal the evidence of their cruel pur- 
pose ; how the fire was extinguished by the neighbors, and the dam- 
ning deed ultimately revealed ; and how the man expiated the crime 
on the scaffold, while the woman, the worse of the two, ingeniously 
contrived to escape. I think there is no sadder story in the wide 
range of inhumanity ; from the first slaughter of the innocents to the 
night when Angie was so barbarously massacred, I know of nothing 
more sorrowful, more painful, more revolting. 

This theme, at best, is abhorrent : let us turn for a moment to the 
last of our group — suicide. 

This is not the time or place to discuss the medico-legal phases of the 
act of self-destruction. You are familiar with the features of the oft- 
quoted cases which have been adjudicated in England and in this 
country; with the measure of moral and legal responsibility which 
attaches; and with the authoritative construction of the stipulation 
which voids a policy in case the assured shall die by his own hand. 
You are also aware that while the English decisions strictly construe 
the words "die by his own hands," or the words u commit suicide," 
as extending to all voluntary acts — so to speak — whether the party 
committing such acts be sane or insane, the American cases, with 
few exceptions, until within a very recent period, construed the same 
words as meaning only criminal acts of self-destruction, and not as 



20 

extending to acts beyond the control of the will. But the prevailing 
adoption by the American companies of the " sane or insane " clause 
is turning the tide of interpretation and decision in one direction, and 
your attention in future is therefore likely to be diverted to the con- 
sideration of incidental questions. 

Let me point you to one of these incidents. When the bank 
strengthens its safe-guards by improvements in its locks and in the 
construction of its vaults, the burglar, in order to circumvent the 
extra precautions, improves his equipment for assault correspond- 
ingly. It is Greek meeting Greek ; it is fighting fire with fire. 
Heretofore, men reckless of fate and having no further interest in 
earthly existence, only solicitous of worldly provision for their 
kindred, and not simply willing, but eager to impose upon the com- 
panies the support of those they leave behind, have depended less 
upon covering their tracks and breaking the chain of circumstantial 
evidence than upon the tender commiseration their heirs were certain 
to obtain from sympathetic juries. Hereafter, when such heirs come 
into court with professed claims, defendant will merely insist upon 
impartial settlement by reference to the contract, and inasmuch as 
the construction of the conditions of the contract is a matter for a 
justice-loving judge, and not for a corporation-hating jury, there can 
be but one conclusion. 

What then? Why, if the cracksman can educate himself to open a 
combination lock, what is to prevent a deliberate suicide from over- 
reaching a life company? There are secret passages out into the 
unknown and tue infinite which any intelligent man may find. 
There are ways by which an amateur physiologist or an amateur 
chemist may juggle a company out of its money without risk of de- 
tection. As Oakey Hall said, in a newspaper article* just before his 
singular disappearance, " Even if a man be bent upon self-destruction, 
why should he taint his memory, or outrage the feelings of his family 
by having his purpose discovered ? He has only to enlist as a private 
soldier, and then seek a prairie chair beside Sitting Bull ; or to pull 
off his flannel in March, and woo the insidious pneumonia ; or to 
alternate cream pies witfo lobster for a week ; or to hear the 
music of Wagner for a month ; or to hire a two-story house ad- 
jacent to Harlem flats, when, presto, he would, in an orthodox 

* " The Suicide Crop.'"— Illustrated Weekly. 



21 

manner, and without risking bis life insurance policies, find him- 
self reported by the Board of Health in the tables of death from 
natural causes." But aside from such humorous enumeration of ways 
and means, there are toxical agents which, at the present time, are 
absolutely beyond the reach of chemical or microscopic analysis. 
There are deadly substances — not readily accessible, we admit— 
which act so quietly as nerve poisons, muscle poisons, or blood 
poisons, that it would be easier to trace the marsh miasm volun- 
tarily inhaled that it might end in a fatal remittent, or apply an 
inquisitorial probe to exposure deliberately courted that it might be 
crowned with irremediable mischief. Some of these poisons, like the 
wourali of Guiana, for instance, abolish the power of the -nerves of 
motion; others, like the corroval with which arrows are envenomed 
in Panama, palsy the action of the heart; and others, like carbonic 
oxide, destroy the function of the red globules of the blood. A chip 
from a Calabar bean is potent enough to make a large cavity in the 
money-bags of a company, while the death-dealing juices for which 
Java and Australia are unenviably noted, laugh to scorn such self- 
betraying^ drugs as morphia, or strychnia, or aconite, or prussic acid. 
Your calculating, methodical, and self-disciplined suicide of the future 
will not make the mistake that the Belgian poisoner, Count de Bo- 
carme, made in killing his brother-in-law. After studying chemistry 
with a famous teacher, he fitted up at home an apparatus for the dis- 
tillation of nicotine, stupidly thinking that thereby the game was in 
his own hands. But his nicotine led him to the gallows. Nor will 
your cautious contriver forget himself as Dr. Webster did when he 
killed Parkman. Webster knew that with the appliances of his 
laboratory, and with strong nitric acid, he could have annihilated the 
body in the course of nine hours, but he lost his wits, and hence he 
lost his life. Some of you will remember a Hungarian romance that 
recently came to light. Baron Olnyi, a few years after marriage to a 
most estimable lady to whom he was devotedly attached, lost his pro- 
perty, amounting to two millions, in speculation. When he realized 
his utter ruin, he obtained insurances on his life to a very large 
amount. He then had recourse to a plan of slow poisoning, and died 
in about ten months. Subsequent investigation unfolded the mystery. 
He had rented a smail apartment in a remote and obscure quarter of 
the city of Pesth, and there spent his entire time, except that ap- 
propriated to meals and sleep at home, in smoking enormous quanti- 
ties of the strongest tobacco he could procure, until his nervous system 



was shattered, and torpor and prostration ended in dissolution, But be 
left behiod him tbe tell-tale witnesses— smoking cap and gown, pipes 
and cigars, reclining seats, and chests containing tobacco enough to 
stock an establishment. When your comiug suicide concludes to 
saturate himself with nicotine in this way, be will turn cap and gown 
and all else into smoke before be goes home for tbe last time. Or if 
he prefers a close of lead, he will make his pistol tell a story of acci- 
dent, or of discharge in tbe hands of some other person, that will 
deceive the yery elect. 

Nevertheless, your ideal suicide of tbe future will sometimes show 
that he, too, is made of fallible stuff. He will make mistakes. Ke 
will, at best, surround himself with an atmosphere of doubt, as 
Captain Colvocoresses did at Bridgeport. And then will come up 
again the question of cowardly submission to compromise, just as it 
did in his case. Why cannot the companies take the stand that Mr. 
Batterson did in the case of Rev. Isaac B. Smith, indicted and tried 
for drowning his wife, a robust womau, in a stream of water only 
eighteen inches deep, and acquitted — of course — by an American 
jury ? Mrs. Smith was insured for $6,000, and the reverend claimant, 
whining and cringing as if apprehensive of delay or repulse, offered 
to compromise the price of blood for §4,000, Did Mr. Batterson 
welcome this concession, and sacrifice duty and dignity, and sell out 
his convictions thus cheaply ? On the contrary, he said to Mr. 
Smith :— 

" If you have observed the letter and spirit of the contract in good 
faith, you are entitled to the whole amount; if not, we are not liable 
either legally or equitably for any part of it. There is no question of 
law bearing on the case in regard to which we are in doubt, and no 
legal principle to be determined, so far as we are concerned, by com- 
promise rather than litigation. All questions of fact have been as 
fully settled as they probably ever can be by human testimony ; at all 
events, we have discharged our duty by giving the subject most care- 
ful scrutiny, and we do not feel called upon to compromise rather 
than await further developments of time. The whole matter is nar- 
rowed down to the question of your responsibility for the alleged 
accident, and the fearful consequences which followed. So far as the 
law is concerned, that question has been settled by the verdict of a 
jury in your favor. The correctness of that verdict, and the judg- 
ment of the court, we shall accept for our own guidance, trusting 
that it will be affirmed by a higher tribunal when the secrets of all 
hearts shall be made known. We shall therefore pay you the full 
amount called for by the policy." 



23 

Thus, gentlemen, we have reviewed, hi a manner necessarily super- 
ficial, the chapter of fraud. Limitation of time forbids. a wider survey, 
but I trust that sufficient has been said to quicken perception of the 
claims of this theme to more serious consideration than it has yet re- 
ceived. It is especially important in promoting among the people a 
better understanding of the true position of the companies when they 
are forced into an attitude of resistance to fraudulent exaction. The 
sooner the people comprehend the desperate expedients that men and 
women of the baser sort resort to in order to rob the companies, the 
sooner will they be persuaded that the companies owe it to the policy- 
holders who constitute a membership selected from all ranks in the 
community, to protect their interests from the incursions of these 
modern banditti. In their conflict with a startling increase of moral 
hasard, their defensive action has too often been made a subject of 
ill-considered complaint and censure by chronic grumblers, while in 
the daily press unfair and unjust comment has been made to do duty 
in place of rightful and honest criticism. The free and easy writers 
who dispose of the most momentous questions with a flourish of the 
pen, charge the companies— the bloated corporations, as they are fond 
of styling them— with chivalrously carrying on an unequal warfare 
with the widows and orphans they are orgauizeel to protect, while 
the fact is that these institutions are simply opposing the machina- 
tions of fraud. Time was when the companies were super-sensitive 
to unreasoning clamor, when they so shrank from litigation that they 
were ready to hold out the olive branch of conciliation even to the 
arm that was raised to strike them. But that sort of cowardice has 
undergone a wholesome change. While there is no uudue readiness 
to enter the lists of battle, there is no faint-hearted refraining when 
the tocsin of war rings out the call The day has gone by for the 
payment of false claims to perfldous wretches merely to avoid the 
notoriety of court trials, the badgering of lawyers, the prejudice of 
juries, the hostility of newspaper scribblers, or the warped or one- 
sided judgment of thoughtless people. These elements of terrorism 
have been measurably overcome, and the companies need not, and do 
not experience the timorousness which has so often in the past re- 
strained them from legal defense of their rights. Instead of allowing 
juries and even courts to become virtual accessories after the fact to 
swindling and perjury; instead of robbing the real widows and 
orphans of honorable men and good citizens to enrich the pretended 
orphans of thieves and enemies of society; instead of justifying and 



24 

vindicating a breach of trust on the part of their trustees that would 
consign the trustees of the funds of any other association to the peni- 
tentiary, they are bravely pricking the bubbles of fallacy, and turning 
the tide of rational and impartial judgment in the right direction. 
More than that, they are subserving the ends of justice, when justice 
without their intervention would be unnoticed or defeated. And if, 
through their instrumentality, murderers are brought to the gallows, 
the fault does not rest with them, nor with the law, but upon the 
blood-stained soul of the culprit. The infliction of the penalty will 
be sustained by the voice of public approval, and the companips will 
receive their just meed, not as mercenary litigants, but as supporters 
and promoters of law and order. 

Gentlemen of the Association, permit me, in closing these remarks, 
to offer a word of congratulation and of sympathy. Your noble com- 
monwealth stands in the front rank of the states of the American 
Republic. From your northern shores, washed by the restless surges 
of Lake Erie, to your southern border, where flows the historic stream 
whose Wyandotte name was translated La Belle Biviere, you have a 
goodly heritage. You have vine-clad slopes and fertile plains and 
smiling valleys and thriving hamlets and growing cities and happy 
homes and fair women and brave men, — truly, your lines are fallen 
in pleasant places. You have given to the nation its president ; to 
the highest court in the land its chief and one of his associates ; to 
the treasury its premier ; to the army the first and second in command ; 
to the navy five of its admirals ; and to all branches of the public 
service, at home and abroad, some of its brightest ornameuts. Yet 
with all this material wealth, with all this aesthetic culture, with all 
this social advancement, all this political precedence, all these sources 
of pride and distinction, there is one source of honor and of credit, of 
which you, my friends, may be especially proud, — one star in the 
constellation which shines with no borrowed light. The organization 
which I have the honor to address stands alone in its glory. It is dis- 
tinctive as the only State association of its kind. Its peculiar success 
is due to propulsive and sustaining forces which are in the highest 
degree creditable to your energy, your sagacity, your managing 
ability, and your fraternal spirit. If it has been fruitful of good and 
serviceable in many ways in by-gone years, it should be doubly so in 
the years that are to come. If it has been conducive to more intimate 



25 

acquaintance with each other; if it has promoted better understand- 
ing among you ; if it has repressed jealousies, and softened asperities, 
and led to interchanges of kindly feelings and sentiments ; if its annual 
reunions have stimulated to increased devotion to duty; if the mag- 
netism of personal attrition has strengthened you iu your work,— 
I pray you, as one deeply interested in your welfare, to maintain. un- 
impaired the cohesive attraction of your organization. As one fitted 
to sympathize with you by years of association as a medical examiner 
with your fellow-workers in Maryland, accompanying them early and 
late, in season and out of season, through evil report and good report, 
gladly helping them to enlighten ignorance, to remove doubts, to meet 
objections, to scatter prejudices; as one confidingly admitted into the 
inner circle of your trials, your temptations, your conflicts, your 
grievances, I invoke you to stand fast in your adherence to one 
another For in this fraternal co-operation there is not only the 
strength of a common cause, and the bond of a common sympathy, 
but that concordant and concerted action so needful in the present 
crisis. Not that a combination of forces is wanted to silence noisy 
declamation, or that yon need care to rebuke the senseless malcon- 
tents who can see nothing but unmixed iniquity in corporate admin- 
istration, and who denounce the insurance system itself as inherently 
insecure, unjust, and oppressive. Violence, at the worst, is short- 
lived, and the policy of conciliation must take a different direction. 
It must listen to the " still, sad murmur " of sorrow more than to the 
harsh reproach of anger ; it must seek to soothe and to satisfy those 
who, in spite of the doubtings of distrust and the gloom of disappoint- 
ment, refuse complete surrender of their cherished faith, and who, in 
storm, even more than in sunshine, instinctively cling to the refuge 
of their dependence as the only ark of safety for those they love. It 
must check the further lapse of confidence, and the further dispo- 
sition to regard life insurance as a doubtful friend, if not a hostile 
snare. It must prevent the widening of the breach between popular 
sentiment and the institution you represent by appropriate instruc- 
tion and enlightenment. It must reform public opinion, disarm 
censure, and avert suspicion in the only rational way — through open- 
hearted, unreserved, undisguised, straightforward candor, honesty and 
truth. Pursue this course, and you may apply to yourselves the lan- 
guage of the apostle to the Church of Corinth, — " We are troubled on 
every side, yet not distressed ; perplexed, but not in despair; perse- 
cuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." You will 



26 

learn that though trials have their heart-aches, they have their uses as 
well; that though martyrdom has its thorns, it has its roses, too. 
And in after years, aDd under some serener sky, when you look back 
upon these frowns of fortune, and this apprenticeship to duty and 
obligation, you will say with the great dramatist — 

" Sweet are the uses of adversity, 

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Yet wears a precious jewel in its head." 



LB.JL'05 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




